The remainder of the crowd clashed glasses, while
Tom and his father-in-law bowed profoundly. Then
the whole crowd went out to steal horses for the two
men, and had them on the trail within an hour.
As they rode off, Stumpy Flukes remarked:

“There’s a splendid shot ruined for life.”

“Yes,” said Boston Ben, with a deep sigh
struggling out of his manly bosom, “an’
a bully rassler, too. The Church has got a good
deal to answer fur, fur sp’ilin’ that
man’s chances.”

[Illustration]

DEACON BARKER’S CONVERSION.

Of the several pillars of the Church at Pawkin Centre,
Deacon Barker was by all odds the strongest.
His orthodoxy was the admiration of the entire congregation,
and the terror of all the ministers within easy driving
distance of the Deacon’s native village.
He it was who had argued the late pastor of the Pawkin
Centre Church into that state of disquietude which
had carried him, through a few days of delirious fever,
into the Church triumphant; and it was also Deacon
Barker whose questions at the examination of seekers
for the ex-pastor’s shoes had cast such consternation
into divinity-schools, far and near, that soon it
was very hard to find a candidate for ministerial honors
at Pawkin Centre.

Nor was his faith made manifest by words alone.
Be the weather what it might, the Deacon was always
in his pew, both morning and evening, in time to join
in the first hymn, and on every Thursday night, at
a quarter past seven in winter, and a quarter before
eight in summer, the good Deacon’s cane and
shoes could be heard coming solemnly down the aisle,
bringing to the prayer-meeting the champion of orthodoxy.
Nor did the holy air of the prayer-meeting even one
single evening fail to vibrate to the voice of the
Deacon, as he made, in scriptural language, humble
confessions and tearful pleadings before the throne,
or—­still strictly scriptural in expression—­he
warned and exhorted the impenitent. The contribution-box
always received his sixpence as long as specie payment
lasted, and the smallest fractional currency note
thereafter; and to each of the regular annual offerings
to the missionary cause, the Bible cause, and kindred
Christian enterprises, the Deacon regularly contributed
his dollar and his prayers.

The Deacon could quote scripture in a manner which
put Biblical professors to the blush, and every principle
of his creed so bristled with texts, confirmatory,
sustentive and aggressive, that doubters were rebuked
and free-thinkers were speedily reduced to speechless
humility or rage. But the unregenerate, and even
some who professed righteousness, declared that more
fondly than to any other scriptural passage did the
good Deacon cling to the injunction, “Make to
yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.”
Meekly insisting that he was only a steward of the
Lord, he put out his Lord’s money that he might
receive it again with usury, and so successful had
he been that almost all mortgages held on property
near Pawkin Centre were in the hands of the good Deacon,
and few were the foreclosure sales in which he was
not the seller.